Chapter 5. New parameters for the sociophonetic indexes 139
fact for a long time. Nevertheless, the way in which the speaker/listener of a linguis-
tic community can arrange the huge variability normally occurring in speech is still
not clear. Neither is it clear whether and how sociophonetic variation informs the
cognitive patterns of the individuals. In other words, although human utterances
normally give information about social factors, we may ask whether it makes any
sense to describe all such sociophonetic indexing. As correctly Labov (2006: 508)
observes, “no matter how narrowly we code variation, there still remains a residue
of free variation”. And free variation has no cognitive value.
On reverse, we would like to assume a more abstract, cognitive-oriented point
of view. Our aim is that of presenting the sociophonetic analysis of a set of pro-
cesses occurring in Tuscan Italian with crucial reference to the phonological sys-
tem, i.e. to the abstract representation of sounds and sound categories. The major
goal of this paper is to propose a new, original set of parameters for the analysis of
sociophonetic indexes, based on the metaphor of speech as a solid body.
The paper is organized as follows. In §2, a preliminary discussion of the nature
of sociophonetic indexes is presented, in relation to some complex issues which
are only partially debated in the existing literature. In §3, the linguistic repertoire
of Tuscany is briefly introduced with special reference to the main phonological
processes occurring in the local pronunciation of Italian. In the subsequent para-
graphs (§4 through §8), a new model for sociophonetic analysis is proposed. Being
the model grounded on the metaphor of solids, its parameters are metaphori-
cally identified and defined as the properties of solid bodies, i.e. shape, size, thick-
ness and weight. Then, the possible interactions among the parameters is shortly
addressed (§9). In the last sections of the paper (§10–§11), the sociophonetic
parameters proposed are compared with the socially-marked variables proposed
by Labov (2001), showing analogies and differences. The advantages which can be
derived from the model are finally discussed, with the explicit acknowledgement
of the need for the inspection of phonological systems in sociophonetic analysis.
- The sociophonetic indexes
Relevant information about the speaker as a member of a specific linguistic com-
munity normally derives from sociophonetic indexes, which are often grounded
in the so-called fine phonetic details (Local 2003; Hawkins 2003, 2010; Carlson
& Hawkins 2007).^5 However, not all fine phonetic details which can be found in
- As is well-known, the term ‘index’ is basically used with reference to Peirce’s semiotic the-
ory since the beginning of last century: an index refers to an individual object independently
of any resemblance to it, i.e., it is a sign that denotes its object by virtue of an actual connection